


A Few Moments Before the Cogs Screeched

by hearts_kun



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Gen, Plot Twists, Time Loop, someone fucked up here and it probably hurts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 12:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15486078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_kun/pseuds/hearts_kun
Summary: Goro, usually silent and reserved, was amazingly talkative at his deathbed. Talkative enough to make some memories break through. Only Akira didn'twantto remember.





	A Few Moments Before the Cogs Screeched

**Author's Note:**

> jii-ro, thanks for editing!  
> prompt: “What is your idea of Justice?” he smiled and drank his coffee, then he died.

“There’s poison there—“

“I know.”

There was something between them, slithering like a deadly ghost, like a fearsome aroma of a tragedy that was about to knock the door.

There was poison in his cup, and they both knew he was going to drink it.

“Are you scared?” — “I am.”

Akira wasn’t scared to lose him. There was something else. Something terrible, something rotten in his eyes, in his readiness, in his acceptance of his own death and betrayal that Akira had cast upon him. Akira had to betray him first this time. It wasn’t an option: last cycle they lost Ryuji, and Ryuji never came back, Ryuji never continued into the loop, Ryuji— died forever.

Akira wasn’t ready to risk anyone else’s life. There were already only six out of the seven phantom thieves left. One more irreversible death, that’s what Akira was scared of.

Goro frowned, slowly rubbing the thick white edge of the cup. He never approved of fear or mourning. Five cycles ago when they made their first deal, the first thing he said was, _You should forget what loss means._ That was his motto, the rule by which he lived; Akira never asked how many cycles Goro survived before he came to terms with his rule.

More than Akira himself, he assumed, because no matter how many lives Akira would go through, he couldn’t understand Goro Akechi. Not yet.

How many deaths did he have to endure for any words to lose value for him? Was he warped even before they met? When did the loop start for him?

“What will you do if I don’t come back next loop? What if dying really matters this time?”

It was scary, hearing that; it was scary, because it was that same thought that kept drumming in Akira’s temples, making him guilty and pathetic. He almost wanted to tell Goro not to drink, but — his heart skipped one beat — he knew his friends were more important. He couldn’t let them all die one by one because of Goro’s twisted experiments, he didn’t care if it was bringing both of them closer to the exit. If living in a loop meant keeping his friends alive, then Akira was willing to do so.

“Not like _I_ care though,” Goro smiled just with the corners of his mouth, only for a second, but it was enough. He knew how to hit him hard, he’d always known.

He probably decided long ago that life wasn’t worth living, that bastard, and Akira had no idea how to confront him about that. Standing in the middle of nowhere; this white thick edge of a cup; this nauseous coffee aroma — since when had it become such? — this stinging feeling that bit your neck, that told you something was wrong. Akira felt so lost and so sure; so powerless and so complete. Maybe it would have been easier if Goro was fighting for his life, if there was at least something in him capable of living. But he was what he was: an empty shell, letting Akira make the choice.

A teasing empty shell. For fuck’s sake.

“What’s your idea of justice, then? Letting them die, just because you want a way out, a way, that might not even exist, a way—”

“Well?” he grinned, and blood froze in Akira’s veins, “Go on.”

They both knew he couldn’t. He was too broken for that, too weak after all these cycles of constant attempts to find something that now seemed fake like a fog.

Sharp pain shot through his head, and he tried hard not to break the eye contact.

“You’re fine, as long as everything goes on without change. Correct me, if I’m wrong, Kurusu. My part in this story is constantly dying in front of people I once dared to call friends, and yours is being a leader, a boy who gets back at his shitty fate. As long as nothing interrupts the timeline, _nothing like me_ , you’re going to be good, am I right? It only takes forgetting the ones you lost without my help.”

_Shut up—_

“A way out is a way you never wanted in the first place, because it also meant your way out of Tokyo, and you — you still don’t want to say goodbye. You really didn’t have to go this far again only to have me tell you this.” 

_Shut up, you—_

“Thought you would learn something since the last time.”

Something struck him.

Goro wrapped his fingers around the cup. Goro’s grin turned into a honey smile he always wore for the TV.

_Goro caressed the trigger with an emptiness in his eyes, an emptiness that could kill. Goro’s honey smile turned into a grimace, but his eyes, they stayed the same._

His eyes have been the same for more than five or ten cycles. God knows how many years old this man was, stuck forever in a body of a teenager. He was already self-aware the first time they met.

Could Akira even be sure that the time he remembered as first — really was the first? Just how big this loop really was? A loop in a loop, in a loop? How many were there? Was this all even real? Goro Akechi was the only person who could have any answers, and he was one sip apart from death.

“You asked me, what my idea of justice was. What is _yours_ , Kurusu? Slowly killing your friends one by one, then pretending it never happened?”

“What on earth are you—”

Goro’s lips touched the thick white edge of the cup.

Panic flushed into Akira’s mind, clutching his lungs into a bleeding mess as he bent over the counter, coughing badly and trying to catch a breath.

Goro Akechi took a long sip, an ugly smile smeared over his face.

“I wonder who else will have to die before you realize. ”

Haru and Yusuke flashed before his eyes.

There never were just the seven of them… There have always been nine. In their original timeline—

Akira never finished the thought. Goro Akechi died; the world shattered, blinked and went black.

The cogs screeched, preparing for a restart.


End file.
